10 Best Music Videos Of 2016
2016: the year we saw Donald Trump naked.
With every passing year music videos seem to get more and more ambitious. It makes sense - thanks to video streaming on the internet, more people than ever are watching and sharing music videos. 2016 is no different. This year produced some of the absolute craziest, most memorable music videos of the twenty-first century.
With so many people watching and sharing, and with no content restrictions imposed by TV networks, artists are free to depict their vision however they choose. Musicians can be as shocking or as ridiculous as they want.
In this instance, shocking means commissioning the lifelike (and very naked) recreation of a dozen celebrities, chucking them in bed together, and ridiculous means violently dismantling an old shoe.
But that's just the tip of 2016's music video iceberg...
10. Kendrick Lamar - God Is Gangsta
Straight off the back of one of the most stunning accomplishments in hip-hop history, Kendrick Lamar released a music video not for one song from To Pimp A Butterfly, but two. God Is Gangsta is a short, seven minute video which presents tracks U and For Sale? back to back.
Despite appearing in the same video, the clips for each track are strikingly different. U's video is directed by Jack Bergert of Psycho Films. In it, Kendrick is seen screaming his head off, brandishing a bottle of alcohol while slowly descending into madness. The video is hazy and intimate; it feels like we're glimpsing a vulnerable moment we shouldn't be.
This is in stark contrast to For Sale?, directed by PANAMAERA and shot in Paris at the Le Silencio club. While U was totally minimal, For Sale? sees Kendrick wander through a club of half-naked women interspersed with shots of his adult baptism. The colour of the club scenes - a deep, sexual red - overwhelms the cool blue of the baptistryl pool.